Large passenger coaches are presently being converted into travel homes for professional entertainers, athletes, and other personalities who must travel a great deal of the time. These coaches are delivered to the converter from the manufacturer in a stripped down condition with a heating system, including air ducts, but without an air conditioning system. It is therefore left up to the converter to install its own air conditioning.
It has been the general practice in the industry to purchase preexisting air conditioning systems and install them in the best way possible in a stripped down coach. This practice has proven, however, to be far from satisfactory for a number of reasons.
Typically, the preexisting systems purchased by the converter are either window units or split residential units. The average coach generally requires that three separate units be installed to properly cool the driver and passenger compartments of the coach. In the case of window units where all the component parts of the system are mounted upon a single frame, the units are generally mounted in the cargo area as close as possible to the existing air duct servicing a particular area. The three units are bulky, thus take up a good deal of valuable cargo space. The split systems, where the evaporator is separated from the other components of the system, provide for somewhat greater flexibility of installation. However, here again, three or more units are required to cool the driver and passenger compartments which, again, consumes valuable cargo space. The preexisting units installed in a coach oftentimes come from different manufacturers, thus making installation, servicing and maintaining the units difficult and expensive.
In an effort to solve some of the difficulties associated with air conditioning passenger coaches, the present assignee has recently introduced a dedicated air conditioning system that interfaces well with the existing electrical wiring of most coaches, as well as the existing heating ductwork provided by the manufacturers. The system includes a single condenser and compressor and three separate evaporators that are adapted to provide cooling to both the roadside and the curbside of the coach as well as the driver's compartment. The compressor is a reciprocating machine that is driven through a clutch directly from the engine of the coach. The condenser unit is located in one of the cargo bays in the mid-section of the coach, quite some distance from the compressor. The condenser, in turn, provides liquid refrigerant to the three separated evaporators situated throughout the coach.
The above noted dedicated system represents an improvement in the passenger coach industry and the present invention expands upon these improvements with relation to passenger coaches that are converted to travel homes which are herein referred to as conversion coaches.